New Delhi, Oct 27 (IANS) The Union cabinet on Thursday accorded approval to establishing and operationalising the National Academic Depository (NAD) which envisages doing away with the use of paper certificates for verification of academic records, an official said.
NAD will be operationalised within the next three months and will be rolled out fully throughout the country in the next fiscal, said an official release issued here following a meeting of the Union cabinet.
Union Minister for Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar called the development an "important milestone in higher education".
"It brings transparency and rules out any possibility of tampering. Issue of fake degrees will now become a thing of the past. It will help students immensely. (Under NAD) the records can be shared easily and obtained by students, especially those abroad, or employers at just one click," Javadekar said.
He added that several institutions had already started digitisation of their documents.
NAD will develop an online portfolio of all education certificates across academic institutes (Universities/Institutes/Boards) which can be submitted easily for employment, higher education and loans and are easily trusted and verified.
It will integrate directly with Boards/Universities which issue certificates and hence ensure authenticity of the records.
Academic awards can be verified and authenticated, accessed and retrieved from the digital depository.
In this year's General Budget, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had incorporated the plan of NAD for school learning certificates, degrees and other academic awards of higher education institutions, on the lines of a Securities Depository.
NAD will be operationalised by two depositories -- NSDL Database Management Limited (NDML) and CDSL Ventures Limited (CVL) -- which are registered under Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) Act, 1992.
Academic institutions will be responsible for the authenticity of records uploaded by them into the integrated system. NAD will extend support to them to upload data digitally. The uploaded data from various institutes will be integrated in the NAD by the depositories.
It will register institutions, boards, eligibility assessment bodies, students and verifying entities like banks, employer companies, government agencies and academic institutions.
It will provide digital or a printed copy of the academic awards with security features to students or other authorised users. It will verify academic awards, certificates online on the same day of request by any authorised user.
However, it will allow access of academic awards to potential employers and academic institutions only after receiving consent of students.
